“…’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” -Mark 12:31- The wind is blowing hard again today. It feels all too familiar of that horribly windy day last week which brought with it fire that changed so many peoples’ lives. My heart has been heavy for the ranchers who lost cattle, fences, their livelihood […]
The romanticized view of a family farm or ranch is a small acreage, a menagerie of farm animals and a large garden with abundant produce to feed the family for an entire year. Many of our ancestors farmed and did what they could to keep only their family sustained. Today, two percent of the population […]
In conversations about animal care and welfare, antibiotics and hormones often get bundled together. They are often associated with one another. But the truth is, they are two very different tools that ranchers and beef producers use. Let me explain the differences. Hormones First and foremost, hormones occur naturally in beef. Hormones are products of […]
Identifying our cattle is how we know who they are. Sure, we get to know their personality when we are out with them everyday on the ranch. 1103Y is the bossy cow always to the feed bunk first. I would know that if she had a ear tag or not! But since we work […]
As a rancher, mom and main chef in my household, we have two whole shelves in our freezer dedicated to ground beef. It is such a versatile, easy protein to add to any meal – and healthy! We get a 90/10 blend (90% lean beef/10% fat) from our local butcher, and I hardly ever have […]
With raising cattle, my Uncle Mark would say, “We are grass farmers.” When it comes to raising cattle, the health of our grass is imperative to the health of our cattle. On our ranch, we practice “holistic grazing” or rotational grazing, which means we mimic the natural herd grazing where cattle graze and keep moving. […]
My son and I had an adventure this week to “hunt thistles”. It was actually a chore, but we had to make it fun somehow, so hunting it was. We had two different types of thistles in our pasture – musk and canada. Both have pretty, purple flowers, but they have thorns and “pokey” as Chisum […]
Beef cattle must be healthy and well-cared for in order to produce great, quality meat. And one of the ways that we keep our animals healthy on our ranch is by using antibiotics. We don’t just use antibiotics to use them. On our ranch, we have a herd health program where our cattle get regular […]
I didn’t intend for this to correlate with Earth Day, but it seems like a pretty good fit to show my new compost bin today to celebrate doing better for our planet. Since moving to the country, having a bigger garden and not having a garbage disposal, I’ve been researching how to make my own […]
I posted previously about how ranchers prepare for a snowstorm. I posted a picture of this heifer who was getting ready to calve. And yes, she thought the snowstorm was a perfect time to have a calf.Thankfully, we got her into the barn before the foot of snow dumped. She and the heifer calf are […]
